A British composer's ambitious quest to premier a requiem in the highly atmospheric Abney Park cemetery by lantern light.

Sunday, 14 December 2014

High ceilings

Michelle and I are currently at Brother Edward and Sascha's house watching the X Faxtor final. We're enjoying the concept of battle buses emblazoned with the images of the finalists. There seem to be one or two too many subliminal messages knocking around, however, suggesting we vote for Fleur. I was half expecting to see her battle bus driving through the background of shots where her competitors were visiting their families in Croydon and places.

The poor Italian contestant (largely tipped to come third) didn't get to go back to Rome. He was sent instead to an Italian Restaurant in Soho, and when it came to the round where the contestants duet with famous pop artists, he had to make do with the low-rent Ella Henderson. The poor lad's mentor, Spice Girl Mel B, was apparently too ill to be there to unreservedly gush about him, so the poor lad looked utterly abandoned.

We're counting the cliches; "you don't know how good you are," "you gave it 110 per cent," "you look like a star, you sing like a star..."

Michelle has been with us for much of the day, which was, by all accounts, a very lovely sunny one. This is the sort of weather I believe the Germans would call Kaiser Wetter. Crisp blue skies, a watery sun and a hint of frost in the air. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, which meant the temperatures plummeted as night fell, and as we walked to the local Sainsbury's to buy mince pies, the roofs of cars were all covered in a thick layer of ice.

The Greenwich peninsular opposite Edward and Sascha's house is a hive of activity right now. Every time I come here it seems there's another skyscraper being built. Apparently there's a massive development of hexagon-shaped buildings planned for the area of scrubland on the other side of The Dome. Perhaps the ludicrous cable cars they've built from nowhere to nowhere in this part of the world will finally prove useful for someone. My friend Rupert tells me it's the most terrifying ride he's ever had.

I dropped Michelle off at Canary Wharf tube. Seldom have I visited a less welcoming part of town. There are checkpoints on every corner searching for bombs and god knows what. And every road is closed or inaccessible due to building works. We snaked our way through traffic cones and walled-off streets, with little faces of men in hi-viz peering suspiciously at us. No city of mine should be this unaccommodating. The Gaza Strip is a friendlier spot!

I went home via Hackney, where I was picking Nathan up from the party of a mutual friend. What a god forsaken dump Hackney is. That said, the flat where our friend lives is one that I deeply covet. It's a beautiful, tall-ceilinged artistic pad with enormous windows with sills big enough to sit on. The party was a rather fabulous affair as well. It was peopled almost exclusively by members of the box-office/ ticket seller fraternity. An entire table in the kitchen had been dedicated to the making of cocktails with almost every alcoholic drink, mixer, chaser and shot that you could imagine lined up, and books floating about which dealt with how to make the perfect drink. We stayed a great deal longer than expected, largely because it was so much fun.

We drove back home and I was asleep before my head touched the pillow!

About Me

Composer and television director. Recent works include: A Symphony for Yorkshire (winner of 3 RTS Awards and a Prix de Circom), Tyne and Wear Metro: The Musical (winner of a Gillard award), The Pepys Motet, The London Requiem, Songs from Hattersley, A1: The Road Musical (nominated for a Grierson Award), Watford Gap: The Musical, Coventry Market: The Musical (nominated for a SONY award and recipient of two Gillard awards) and Oranges and Lemons, which features every bell in every London church mentioned in the nursery rhyme.